Year after year, the amount of cases of obesity among both adults and children has been drastically on the rise in epidemic proportions. Obesity is both an individual clinical condition and is increasingly viewed as a serious public health problem. The adverse health consequences of obesity are well known and established. In particular, obesity has been linked to a predisposition to various health conditions and diseases including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dyslipidemia, gallbladder disease, and even some types of cancers. Even though the health consequences of being obese are serious, many are unable or unwilling to lose weight on their own volition.
Over the past several years, various weight loss programs, exercise equipments, diets and bariatric treatments have been developed in order to combat the obesity epidemic. These solutions are often ineffective for long-term weight loss or may even include serious health risks. Unfortunately for many, the bariatric treatments require extremely risky and costly invasive surgical procedures.
A method of weight loss for morbidly obese patients as described by commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 6,627,206, the entire contents of which are specifically incorporated herein by reference, involves the ingestion of magnetically self-tessellating, space-filling polyhedrons (hereinafter referred to as “magnetic cubes,” or “cubes”). In exemplary embodiments therein, approximately 80% of the patient's gastric lumen is displaced by the non-digestible cubes that semi-permanently reside within the stomach. The therapeutic effect is similar to stomach stapling, gastroplasty, and similar restrictive surgeries but requires no surgery and is reversible via an endoscopic procedure under conscious sedation.
The tessellated aggregate can also be gradually produced over time by the patient at home. For instance, in one embodiment of the above described procedure, the patient would be prescribed a quantity of capsules, each containing two magnetic cubes measuring 8.4 mm across their flats. The patient would swallow eight capsules with each meal (four times a day) for one month. After 30 days, the patient's gastric lumen would have 80% of its volume—roughly 1.2 liters—occupied by the cubes.
The above-described procedure does have drawbacks, however, as any near-round object that can make its way down the esophagus can also pass through the pylorus and exit the gastric lumen (stomach). What is needed is an improved procedure that retains the benefits described above, but that also remedies problems associated with the cubes prematurely passing through the pylorus. Additionally, there is room for improvement on the design of the cubes and delivery mechanism used for the bariatric treatment.